Robodog
An agronomist’s new best friend
Meet the new four-legged companion with a unique ability to capture leaf-level insights.
For years, agronomists and growers have utilized satellites and drones to take a bird’s-eye view of their crops and fields. In recent years, they’ve been able to use their smartphones to identify on-the-spot weed, pest, and disease threats.
But they’ve been unable to capture crucial crop-level data that could make the difference between thriving yields and a lackluster harvest. Until now.
Meet robodog: the innovative four-legged friend offering a unique view on plant health – and upgrading our knowledge of what’s happening in the field, real-time.
A crop-level companion
What’s special about this dog is the Syngenta-developed technology that has been added to it, allowing it to capture and analyze crops – up close and in real time.
High-quality cameras attached to the dog allow it to capture precise, three-dimensional plant imagery, while a graphical processing unit (GPU) takes it one step further: running computer vision models on the edge to detect weeds and other crop threats.
These leaf-level insights could ultimately save agronomists and farmers precious time and resources in protecting their crops. The earlier weeds, pests, and disease threats are discovered, the sooner they can be resolved with more targeted interventions.
As Rob Lind, Syngenta Fellow, Computer Vision & AI, explains, this technology, and its unique host, can capture this data at a level of precision that no human could.
“There's a gap, as it were, for an extra imaging platform in the field, or in the greenhouse. There's already satellites, there's drones, there's phones. So, it's basically integrating the dog into this matrix of imaging platforms.”
With a battery life of up to four hours, the dog’s nimble body can carefully navigate crop rows, without damaging the plants or disrupting soil, gathering precious data without leaving a trace – other than paw prints.
“It's really exciting, working in this space, having new ways to visualize cropping systems through the robodog platform,” Rob says. “Plants speak to us in the language of light and robodogs are ideally placed to see these messages to allow us to act upon them.”
Equipped with depth cameras and enhanced graphical processing unit, robodog can monitor crops in real time.
Equipped with depth cameras and enhanced graphical processing unit, robodog can monitor crops in real time.
Rob Lind, Syngenta Fellow, Computer Vision & AI.
Rob Lind, Syngenta Fellow, Computer Vision & AI.
Though it’s still early days for this cutting-edge technology, the potential is huge. At Syngenta’s leading R&D facilities, the robodog could one day help scientists assess the yields of new varieties of vegetable seeds. Out on the field, it can be an extra pair of eyes for agronomists growing different crop types – detecting weeds, pests and diseases that they might miss and helping in predicting crop yields.
As Rob says: “Think of the early days of drones and look where they are now. Give it five to 10 years, and it’ll probably be unrecognizable.”
